


Crawling In My Skin

by IncurableNecromantic



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Crack, Other, The Haunter of the Dark - Freeform, Yuletide Treat, nemesizing, thwartship, yog probably thinks this is the very height of flirtatious banter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 10:23:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2847593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncurableNecromantic/pseuds/IncurableNecromantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nyarlathotep is summoned into flesh as the Haunter of the Dark and left to fend for himself in an abandoned church steeple against a world become very, very bright. </p><p>And then Yog-Sothoth starts feeling at him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crawling In My Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ultharkitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/gifts).



> “What am I afraid of? Is it not an avatar of Nyarlathotep, who in antique and shadowy Khem even took the form of man? … I see it—coming here—hell-wind—titan blur—black wings—Yog-Sothoth save me—the three-lobed burning eye…” --H.P. Lovecraft, _The Haunter of the Dark_

* * *

It was dark. Getting darker, with the storm.

The rain lashed the street below in terrific whip-cracks of water, but here in the steeple of the Federal Hill the storm was more wind than wet. Every few instants the walls shook with resounding thunder and the ferocious snap of lightning, as if the very sky would shatter apart.

The lights had gone out over the entire city. He’d felt it. Outside the fence of the church he could sense the mincing, repulsive tangle of fleshly little mortals gibbering their inane prayers with a fervency almost astonishing in comparison with their tepid, unpreposessing bodies. That a mortal could pray so, that it could yearn so far was...pathetic, really. Didn’t they know how vulnerable they made themselves, doing that? They stretched too far. They reached for too much.

It was a repugnant reminder of how he came to be in his current predicament. He had not liked the Starry Wisdom Cult, no, not any more than he liked these pathetic fools. It was all the same old mindless worship: same flute-trill, different flop. Hateful, stupid things, with their right angles and their candles. Could he be beaten back like a common witch, scared off by a shape, held at bay like a hound because of a curve?

No! He was shape! Form! The very foundations of existence!

He slammed his abhorrent, fleshy body into the door, turning his back on the box containing the Shining Trapezohedron. Stupid fucking thing! Yuggoth might well worship him, might well serve him and have the means to summon him--but to let it fall into the hands of humans! He, a god, the Soul of the Gods! Dragged into an empty, abandoned bell-tower by an ignorant buffoon, imprisoned in flesh, subject to all the weakness of the night! Held off by the now-impervious power of a mere--

\--earthly--

\--door!

Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, the Black Pharaoh, the God of a Thousand Forms, Spawn of Azathoth, Spirit, Mind, and Messenger of the Outer Gods, stymied by a trapdoor in the bell tower of an abandoned church. It was unthinkable! It was contemptible!

When he caught him, Nyarlathotep was going to have the balls off the meddling little mortal fool who looked into the trapezohedron.

For now, however, he was just a little bit preoccupied getting out of this church. It was dark, finally dark, and he could hear the wind outside. Those candles couldn’t last long, and when they went out and left all the world a blackened void, he’d be free.

He spared a thought for his little human summoner. _Come here, Robert. Come here and let me show you things._

There was a reciprocal tug from the mind of the terrified human, and he allowed his lips to curve very, very slightly.

Then, amidst the thunder and the raging of the storm, came a sound that made him stop throwing himself against the walls, snarling, and stare wildly into the darkness of the bell tower, as if he could see the presence that intruded upon his humiliation.

But it was not a sound, no, not as much as it was a feeling, a push from the Far Outside wedged right up against his consciousness, terrible and glistening. It was a wet thought, bubbly and ichorous, dripping like oozy wax. For a mortal, it would have smote and burned and thundered, but for the Crawling Chaos it was merely a slight scrape, as of velvet across opened skin.

The feeling was, or was as close as the language of the Outer Gods could possibly come to English, “Hey there.”

No. No, no, no.

Strictly speaking, Nyarlathotep did not like anyone. The concept of affinity was such a perilously fleshy idea, rife as all emotion was with the stink of mortality. It was so primitive, so simple, to like or to dislike, and however much time he happened to spend with these humans and participate in their customs for the sake of carrying through Azathoth’s will, Nyarlathotep was aware that he was an Outer God.

That said, there were situations that Nyarlathotep enjoyed. Manipulating sentient beings to his own ends, bewitching them, terrifying them, awing them, and watching them sell themselves away, were a handful of circumstances to his taste. It was nice to be someone else’s master.

He did not like situations that involved Yog-Sothoth. Yog-Sothoth took sides. Yog-Sothoth had been Nyarlathotep’s enemy before, and that was much worse than when, say, Tsathoggua got it into his empty head to get in the Messenger’s way. Every other Outer God hadn’t enough of a grip of sapient thought enough to actually challenge any of Nyarlathotep’s machinations--as long as they got what they needed from their cults, by his intervention, they never paid attention to anything else he might be doing with the little mortals.

Not so with Yog-Sothoth. He handled his own cults and necromancers, and they sought Yog-Sothoth out without any of Nyarlathotep’s assistance (and inevitable ownership of them). Despite being locked out the universe and paying almost no homage whatsoever to Azathoth, the Prolonged of Life managed to meddle in mortal affairs in ways that no one had any business doing, except of course for Nyarlathotep himself.

Yog-Sothoth was one of the few Outer Gods that Nyarlathotep knew to have a mind and the inclination to use it. He knew things. Although bereft of a physical form, Yog-Sothoth was coterminous with all time and all space, so technically speaking, he knew every thing.

Nyarlathotep hated being the less-informed entity in any given situation.

Besides, Yog-Sothoth himself had a sense of humor very difficult to penetrate, compounded by the fact that he was one who seemed to have no clear objective except his own amusement. Nyarlathotep was all for unfathomability, but it was impossible to have a good conversation with him, and at that point what was the use of a mind at all?

Nyarlathotep pulled himself up with as much enormous dignity as his bloated, bat-winged form would permit, and replied.

“...Gate-Keeper.”

Yog-Sothoth felt amused. “So. This is fun.”

Fun?!

“It must be very amusing,” Nyarlathotep observed, “when one is looking at it from your unique vantage point.”

“Coterminously?”

“Peering in through a window,” Nyarlathotep sniped. He swept past the scattered bones he’d dragged up from the room below, back before the trapdoor had become stuck. “Yourself locked out, after all.”

“Well, it’s pretty funny for that reason, too, yeah. Nice to see I’m not the only one in this position.”

“Hardly! You are entirely alone. At least I can reach out and affect the world.”

“Run that by me again, bat-thing?” Yog-Sothoth felt. Nyarlathotep knew himself to be laughed at, but there was nothing he could do but beat at the door with still-greater fury.

“What do you want?” Nyarlathotep demanded. “If you’re going to insist I take another inane mash note to your mate, it’s going to have to wait. Especially since I don’t know if she’s heard about your pale little slice on the side...”

“Shub? No. I got what I needed out of all that and so did she. As for the human, she’s long dead, so that’s no big worry. Good try, though.”

Nyarlathotep tore at the walls of his prison and hurled himself from one end of the bell-tower to the other. It was annoying to have no gossip to spread. What, indeed, was the point of being a messenger if you couldn’t send a suitably dreadful message?

Yog-Sothoth felt at him again. “So. How long have you be up here?”

“Three. Earth. Months,” Nyarlathotep replied, his thoughts rising to a shriek.

“Oosh. You must be hungry.”

Black stars, he was starving. And he’d almost had the little human too, just a bit more than a week ago. The human had been climbing the ladder, becoming nicely singed by his breath, when those little fucking flesh-balls set off some kind of light explosion and woke the human from his trance and sent him careening madly down through the church, where Nyarlathotep could not follow.

It had almost been over!  His sanity would have been down Nyarlathotep's throat and his soul would have been picked fresh off the bone and hurled into the abyss for the Sultan to enjoy.  Alone and waiting for the darkness to take wing, Nyarlathotep would have been able to sport with the corpse a bit.

Thinking of whom... _Robert. See through me. See with my sightless eyes, recall your fate with a mind that is not your own…_

Oh, he could just feel that tingling little brainstem, jangling with blind, mortal panic. He would feast on this one.

Yog-Sothoth was still feeling at him. “I mean, you can’t live off of bones, can you? What do you even eat?”

“Precisely what is it that you want from me?” Nyarlathotep snapped. “I have no time for little games!”

“Just checking in, really. Haven’t heard you on the move recently. I figured I might as well see what’d happened to you.”

“Well, now you know. Feel free to never think on the subject again.”

“Yeah, okay. Uh. Thought I’d give you an update on your boy, Randolph Carter, if you wanted it.”

Carter? The little fellow who made it all the way to Kadath and into his arms? Oh, yes, Nyarlathotep did like him. So easy to lead about, so starved for beauty, so happy to believe. All one had to do was dangle a dream city in front of him like a steak before a dog and he’d fall ass-backwards into Azathoth’s maw with hardly a protest.

“Do you know him?” Nyarlathotep asked, taking a moment to stop beating against the walls and catch his breath. These lungs! Horrible, vile things. The body of a haunter was more trouble than it was worth.

_I am you and you are me, Robert. You’re coming with me. I know where you are. You’re coming with me, Robert!_

“Yeah. He popped up through the Gate of the Silver Key. Turns out I’m his archetype. Go figure.”

For the first time in a very, very long while, Nyarlathotep kind of wished that Yog-Sothoth could exist on a physical plane in this universe. It would’ve been nice for there to be a face to laugh in. One of the facets of the Great Yog-Sothoth, the Soul-Eater, the All Knower, the All-Present, the All in One and One in All, was a silly, naive little daydreamer with a borderline obsessive place-attachment to New England and a tendency to faint at the merest provocation?

It was delicious.

“No,” Nyarlathotep said. Below his wings, somewhere deep within the mass of bloated, writhing tentacles, he was grinning. “Really?”

“Yup. Wanted to see Yaddith. It’s kind of a dump, but whatever. He was curious so I figured I might as well let the kid go.”

“How superlatively generous you are, o Prolonged of Life,” Nyarlathotep snickered cruelly. “And where is he now?”

“Sharing a body with a Yaddith wizard. I think they’re having fun. Y’know, roomies. It’s sitcom stuff, really. Eventually he’ll split off and get his own stuff back. Right now, at a point analogous with the instant you’re stuck in a steeple in Providence, they each have control of one of the body’s arms and they’re getting into a pretty impressive slap-fight.”

Nyarlathotep did not think that in all the vast tracts of the universe, in all that was and all that ever could be, accounting for all customs of all cultures, and even in all the unfathomable pleasures of the gods, could sharing a body with a Yaddith wizard be considered ‘fun.’

“You are too kind, Opener of the Way,” Nyarlathotep purred. “Too good to those who beg your favors.”

“Yeah, I like to think so. And, uh, speaking of generosity, you want some help?”

“As if you could even help me, Beyond-One.”

“Hey! You don’t know my life. You don’t know what I’ve got going for me.”

“No,” Nyarlathotep snarled. “And I don’t care.” He slammed into the door with a grunt. “Anyway, you’re coterminous. You must already know I’ll get out, one way or the other.”

“If you say so.”

And he had gotten out before. He’d managed to strike out into the body of the church before that be-poxed electrical grid had sent him scurrying back up into the steeple. What had happened to the trapdoor to make it stick so impossibly, this time?

A horrible thought occurred. “Are you holding this door closed?”

“What? No. You just said that kind of interference was impossible. Don’t be ridiculous.” And it should be impossible, but Nyarlathotep was not at all certain. He wanted to get out, he had to get out, and what would make it more impossible to escape than the will of a deranged and chatty Outer God determined to overstep his bounds? What would provide more sick _amusement_?

Outside, the storm grew in fury, making the walls rattle. The wind screamed and at last--at last!--he felt the candles of the terrified vigil below blow out.

Nyarlathotep gave up on the trap door and beat himself against the easternmost window. A few hard slams and the louver-boarding gave way with the sickly sound of rending wood.

He gasped a huge breath of fresh, wet air, delighting in his freedom. He leapt out of the tower of the church and pumped his wings against the air. He could feel those pathetic fools in the square below, choking on the fetid odor of the Outside that his escape had released.

(He was of the opinion that his cologne was distinctive, evocative, and extremely pleasing, at least to himself. Filthy little tasteless mortals.)

Now, where was his--ah.

Yes.

Dinner was served.

_Robert, your time has come!_

Nyarlathotep shot towards the other locus of the connection between himself and his prey.

“Oh, hey, that’s interesting,” Yog-Sothoth observed. “Wanna hear something funny?”

“No!”

“I’m being prayed to for intervention against you,” Yog-Sothoth pushed on, as Nyarlathotep knocked a chimney pot or two off a roof and careened wildly in the buffeting wind to stay on track. “Feels like it’s coming from...hm. Milky Way, that Solar System with the dumpy yellow sun, and then that little planet. Earth. Aren’t you there?”

“Yes!”

“What are you doing, you sly old thing, that’s got a human so het up that they're calling on me?”

“It could be anything,” Nyarlathotep replied. “It’s hardly a topic of my consideration, how you claim your followers.”

“Yeah, but I figured you’d want to know who’s afraid of you. Little ego-stroking.”

“I hardly care. It might not even be my fault.” He wanted to clutch onto a building and get better bearings, but in this storm any lost moment could mean a lightning strike. He dipped a wing and scented the air with his monstrous, snouty nose.

“I guess so.”

“I’m not saying I won’t take credit, but just because they say it’s me doesn’t mean it is.”

“Well, I want to know what you’re being accused of. Lemme see. Yeah, Earth--Western hemisphere, North American continent, United States...East Coast. Rhode Island. Providence. Neat! Isn’t that the town you’re in?”

“Yes!”

“Ah...College Street. Nice little Georgian place. Top floor. Is this your guy?”

He nearly fell out of the sky. “...yes, that’s him. Robert Blake.”

“Cool. Cool.” Then, after an instant’s thought. “He seems nice. Maybe I can help him out.”

No. No! He didn’t even know how Yog-Sothoth would intervene if he wanted to, but if he chose to--and after three _months_ \--

“You wouldn’t. He’s mine. He’s mine!” Nyarlathotep insisted. “I’ve got him! I own his soul!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Yog-Sothoth argued. “You’ve got a hook or two in him and no mistake, but I wouldn’t say you own him.”

“I have him! I am he and he is me! He is in my eye, inside my mind! I’m going to eat his sanity! He belongs to me!”

“Yeah? Interesting idea, Bloody Tongue. Think you can substantiate that?”

He let out a scream of unbridled fury, wings pumping and propelling him in a meteoric blast towards his prey. He would have him! He would have his meal!

“I will rip you open!” Nyarlathotep shrieked at Yog-Sothoth. “I’m going to grab you by your iridescent, conglomerate globes and twist you into--into--”

“Dish soap?” Yog-Sothoth bubbled.

“I will take you, Key, and jam you so far up the Gate Lock you’ll--”

“You really are spending too much time with humans, aren’t you? You’re adopting their ideas of threats.”

“Gate-Keeper, I will break through this universe and have you in my claws if you do not--”

Yog-Sothoth laughed a terrible, bubbling laugh at him. Nyarlathotep snarled with impotent rage.

“Well, if you feel that strongly...” Yog-Sothoth felt at last. “You know what? Nah. Sorry, Rob.”

“What?!”

“I mean, you go right on ahead. Chew on his sanity a little. He’s all yours, Face-Eater.”

He winged around a corner and found his prey, staring, blind and terrified, out of a top-floor window in a Georgian house. There! His! All his!

Nyarlathotep closed on his human, hatred and humiliation burning hot, but his triumph was within his grasp. Behind him, a prayer from the humans around the church rose up. Who cared? Who cared about those pitiful fools, praying to nothing, praying for a salvation they could never have? All that mattered was that the lights were still out. All that mattered was that he was terrible, and free, and nigh upon his victim.

All that mattered was this: he saw his human, his little meal, his master’s new plaything sitting at the window, and through his human’s eyes saw himself, his monstrous wings, his hideous, three-lobed burning eye.

He _had_ him.

Nyarlathotep screamed, black wings opening wide against the lightless night, terrible claws out-stretched to seize the window and throw himself into the human’s chambers.

“Bon appetit, baby,” Yog-Sothoth thought at him.

Behind him, the belated lightning bolt cracked and lit up the sky as if it were day.

***

When he came back to himself, burning with agony, torn with mortification, and starvingly hungry, he was beyond angled space and in the court of Azathoth, surrounded by the black planets that rolled in their horror unheeded.

Nyarlathotep picked himself up, rolled around his non-angled head, loosening his neck, and seized the instrument of one of the amorphous flute-players.

He tore the flute from its slimy, appalling lips, and began to beating the musician with its own instruments. As he bludgeoned the the creature with its flute, he listened with some pleasure to the idiot monster’s mindless squeals of terror. A much superior song, to his educated ear.

When his anger was finally spent, Nyarlathotep rammed the point of the flute into one of the musician’s eyes deep enough for it to stand up on its own. Much too soon, the musician’s hands rose to hold the tube again and its lips reformed where its eye had been, and, pain already forgotten, it began piping once more.

Nyarlathotep seethed. That was one thing that had to be said for mortals: they made much better victims. They held onto their impressions of agony in a very satisfying way.

Nyarlathotep turned to face the throne upon which sat the roiling idiot chaos at the center of all infinity. He dropped into a deep, obsequious bow, his limbs fluttering and flourishing flamboyantly.

“Hail Azathoth,” he crooned. “Boundless Daemon Sultan of All, my Father, my Master. Your soul, your servant humbly greets you.”

Attracted senselessly to Nyarlathotep’s announced presence, Azathoth forced his way into Nyarlathotep’s consciousness with inane, impossible, spastic demands and whims. Nyarlathotep tried to stifle any noise of pain at the brutal intrusion. For a mind that relied upon self-imposed order to exist and prosper, it was agony to be cleft open and filled to overflowing with all the insane demands and barbs that poured endlessly from the being of Azathoth.

Nyarlathotep bent his non-angled limbs deeper in his bow and tried to straighten up his head.

“Ngkk--y-yes! Yes! Yes, my Master, I hear you!” he gasped, trying not to sound as if he were begging for it to stop. “Yes, I go to serve you. I am naught but your soul, your very will. Your will, entirely.”

Azathoth’s furious desires sunk to a trickle and Nyarlathotep began to categorize all his father’s demands. Fulfilling these and catching up on everything that he had been kept away from during his imprisonment would take some time. He could not wait to get to it.

Nyarlathotep could never sooth the demon-sultan as the flute-players did, but he could at least leave this court and regain his powers. He would not trade their positions.

As he fled Azathoth’s court, eager to reach the borders of the universe once again, Nyarlathotep perceived again the feeling of Yog-Sothoth. Amused, purring, simpering.

“You’re a good servant, Lord in the Yellow Mask,” Yog-Sothoth snickered. “So composed. So elegant.  Azathoth is lucky to have such a soul.”

“Come forward, Lurker at the Threshold, and let me know you,” Nyarlathotep growled as he sped through the blighted Void. No conglomeration of spheres to hint at his tormentor's body.  All around him must be the very being Yog-Sothoth, and yet nothing at all was him alone.

Irritating.

“Know me? You know me already. I’m just bringing you a little hint.”

Nyarlathotep sneered with a mouth that was not a mouth. “What. More news of Carter, I suppose?”

“Not at all. I’m just telling you where you can get a little something to satisfy yourself, after these unfortunate months.”

Nyarlathotep winged towards the universe and set a foot that was not a foot on the outermost edge.

“If you’re hungry, there’s a priory about three miles out of Anchester that would suit you, Father of All Bats,” Yog-Sothoth purred. “All the rats you can eat.”

Nyarlathotep stepped in the physical universe. He became the Black Pharaoh and dusted off his shoulders. He had some reading to do.

Surely someone, somewhere, knew how to mutilate an Outer God.


End file.
